


Hanakotoba

by GooseAndGold



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/F, Flower Language, hanakotoba
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-05 20:29:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6722260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GooseAndGold/pseuds/GooseAndGold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sakura is recruited by a little girl to pick flowers. She finds herself giving them away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hanakotoba

Sakura sat on a small, grassy hill on the edge of Konohagakure, near the towering stone wall that encircled the entirety of the village. She had chosen a spot in the sun, and was currently examining a scroll that detailed a medical jutsu used in Lightning Country to ease difficult childbirth. She had been outside studying for nearly two hours when a young girl started wandering close. Sakura looked up and saw that the girl was picking flowers—common flowers mostly. Daisies, dandelions, bluebells, and clover. The kunoichi knew there were much better places to pick flowers—being a ninja village, Konoha cultivated public gardens of useful herbs and flowers that were often quite beautiful. The girl didn’t seem to care though, as she assembled her mismatched bouquet. Probably her parents had decided she should play here and this was just what she’d decided to do.

Sakura had only turned back to her scroll for a few minutes before the girl had drifted closer. Sensing she was being watched, the kunoichi looked up and smiled at the child.

“Hi there,” she said pleasantly, “that’s a lovely bouquet you have.”

“Thank you,” the girl told her. “It’s for my daddy.” She stayed where she was, looking at Sakura with all the unapologetic curiousity of a child. “Could you move, please? I want to pick those flowers too.”

Sakura laughed gently at the dismissal. “Sure. Thanks for asking nicely.” She stood and brushed the grass off the back of her tunic, then rolled up her tunic and stretched. “Do you know what those flowers are called?”

The girl held up the flowers in question. “These ones? No.”

“They’re _ayame_. Irises. They mean ‘good news.’”

The girl looked back at the flowers and frowned. “Good news?”

Sakura nodded. “For shinobi, flowers have different meanings. We can send a message just with a bouquet of flowers. Your daisies mean trust, and your bluebells mean thankfulness,” she explained, pointing to the flowers in question.

The girl’s frown deepened for a moment before she looked back up. “Would my daddy understand the flowers?”

“Is your dad a shinobi?”

The girl nodded.

“Then I think he would! Do you want me to help you make a message for him?” Sakura asked.

The little girl nodded once before rushing off to find different kinds of flowers, each of which was followed by an interrogation for Sakura of what they meant.

“Onee-chan, what are these?” the girl called from beside a large boulder where late-season daffodils were starting to wilt.

“ _Suisen_ ,” she called back. “They mean respect.”

The girl considered them for a moment before dashing off without picking them. Sakura smiled; the girl couldn’t be older than four or five, and she probably wasn’t completely confident about what the word ‘respect’ meant.

The girl brought her more varieties of flowers, some of which she added to the bouquet—which was not stunning, by any means, but was shaping up to have a very sweet message. Sakura steered the girl away from inappropriate choices like primrose and spider lilies. “Oh, those are _kuchinashi_ ,” she said when the child came running back with a big bundle of gardenia she had pulled up, roots and all. “They’re not right either. How about you find some cherry blossoms?”

The girl skittered off again, and Sakura lowered herself down to sit back on the grass, brushing idly at the gardenias to clear the dirt off. She took a kunai out of the pouch at her thigh and trimmed the roots and a couple of the squished or browning leaves until they made a lovely bundle. Maybe she would find a vase for them when she got home. Gardenias symbolized a secret love, but if they were just for her, she didn’t really care what their symbolism was. She would probably be too embarrassed to give something as bold as that to someone as a confession.

The girl shouted when she had found a cherry tree with some blossoms remaining, and Sakura quickly tied a thread around her bundle of flowers and jogged over, reaching up to pull down a branch so the child could reach the blossoms she wanted.

As the girl picked out a branch that was still loaded with flowers, Sakura mused that this bouquet was a meaningful one but it wasn’t particularly attractive. If the girl told her father that a jounin kunoichi had helped her assemble it, he would probably wonder what kind of shinobi were so bad at using hanakotoba arrangements. She sighed, figuring it was a charming enough present to get from a daughter. Maybe Sakura just wouldn’t share her name with the kid so she wouldn’t have to be embarrassed.

In the end Sakura felt they’d assembled a good enough little bundle of flowers for what they could find in this uncultivated field, so she took the little girl’s free hand and led her back toward where her mother was apparently waiting.

They reached the bottom of the hill and got to the road when Sakura heard someone shout her name. She looked up and saw Ino waving and walking toward her.

“Onee-chan, who is that?” The girl tugged on Sakura’s hand and pointed.

“That’s my friend Ino. She’s a kunoichi too.”

“Oh. I think she’s really pretty,” the girl stated.

“Aww, that's very sweet of you. I think so too. I think she’d be really happy to hear you say that,” Sakura told her with a smile.

“Hey Sakura, who’s this?” Ino put her hands on her knees and leaned forward. “I like your flowers,” she told the girl.

“They’re for my daddy,” she replied. “Ino onee-chan, Sakura onee-chan said she thinks you’re really pretty. She picked some flowers for you.”

Sakura’s head whipped down to look at the child. “What?” She could feel her cheeks heating up with a blush.

The girl tugged at her hand again. “You said you thought she was pretty! You’re supposed to give flowers to girls you think are pretty,” she demanded.

Well, she _did_ think Ino was pretty. Her pale gold hair, usually bound up in a practical ponytail, hung loose and ghosted all the way down her back. She was wearing her usual mission training outfit, the mesh accents casting exaggerated shadows that showed off the definition of her arms. Her soft skin was criss-crossed with the occasional scar from nearly a decade as a shinobi, and her face was dusted with nearly invisible freckles. She had always held herself with confidence, and often tried to encourage Sakura to do the same. There was something about her that always made Sakura want to steal glances at the slope of her nose and lips, or follow the way her hair trailed down her back, or watch the way the muscles of her shoulders bunched before she threw a shuriken.

And now Ino was watching Sakura with caution and curiosity. Now it would be awkward if Sakura took back the compliment, or if she didn’t give her the flowers. But that was an excuse. Sakura sighed. Yeah, she did think Ino was pretty. She really did.

“You’re right,” Sakura told the little girl, letting go of her hand for a moment. “Ino, I…well I guess, I know that you would have made a much nicer arrangement than this, but I’d like you to have them.”

“Gardenias, Sakura?” Ino asked her slowly, searching her face for something.

“Yes,” Sakura said, forcing herself to meet her friend’s eyes. “Please accept them.”

**Author's Note:**

> The flower meanings in this story are based on what I could learn about Japanese flower symbolism (hanakotoba), but with meanings slightly altered so they could have some sort of useful meaning for shinobi. Flower symbolism IS a canon thing that Sakura and Ino discuss when they're younger, but of course Kishimoto didn't go in depth. 
> 
> This fic was inspired by a tumblr prompt. Hopefully my characterization was okay, even though there wasn't much of it. I wish there were more fics about these two so I had to contribute one.


End file.
